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Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Zombie Safe Homes

It's good to see that someone is finally taking this impending threat seriously. I've been looking at the 2011 Zombie Safe Home competition and while I do find many of the designs intriguing, I'm disappointed that so many rely on either fortification or escape.

Personally, I prefer defence in depth so that the ranks of shambling ghouls are decimated before they even reach the outer perimeter and then unleashing my counter-attack measures to reclaim lost territory before they can establish themselves.

One question that I've had from watching too many zombie films: Has everyone forgotten how to combine barbed wire and machine guns? It always seemed to me that some concertina wire and a Bren gun would do wonders.

7 comments:

Other than the fact that the whole "zombie war" mania leaves me about as interested as I am in Critical Dance Theory and its relationship to corporate structure (that is, not much), I always wonder why nobody ever applies the oldest trick in the book; a wet-moat.

If there's enough available, a few hundred gallons of diesel fuel on top of the water, plus a Very pistol, should be effective as well. Mass disposal is generally more effective than individual or small-group engagement in a time-critical combat environment.

Barbed wire and Bren gun won't work, I'm afraid. For the first, I predict that the first wave of zombies will shamble into it, become entangled and trip, and the second and subsequent waves will simply shamble over them. For the second---.30 cal.? Really? What's it going to do, punch holes in the zombies? Well, yes, that's precisely what it's going to do. But they don't care. They're the shambling undead. As long as their brains are intact, yadda yadda yadda, right? I'm not so sure about eon's suggestion, either, though I think it comes closer to workable. I guess it depends on whether a coating of fuel will set a wet zombie on fire. If we were dealing with Egyptian zombies (i.e., mummies), I could definitely see it happening, but I'd say that your standard North American undead are just too wet and squishy to ignite with a match. Starting a fire with wet wood and all that. Only in this case, the wood is moving in your direction. And trying to eat your brains.

Not sure. Maybe napalm? Greek fire? Greek fire has the romance of history behind it. And also, the pump's got the neat nozzles shaped like dragon heads and stuff. That's got to count for something.

Since zombies, though obviously propelled by magic, obey the laws of mechanics, I've often thought that a head shot isn't necessary. Sure, a big, kinetic round in the chest won't "kill" them, but if you shatter the spine they'll collapse into a flopping, immobile mass.

As to the barbed wire, true, it could be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but nobody in film ever hits on the basic ideas of slowing them down so they can be picked off or manoeuvring them into bottlenecks where their numbers are useless.

Aw, heck. I'm still trying to figure out how they see after their aqueous humour has congealed.

Given zombies lack of abstract intelligence (or indeed, any intelligence, unless someone's let Mr Romero near a typewriter again), I would have thought a good old-fashioned backwards sloped wall would be an effect barrier - just build it 8 or 9 feet tall to be sure.

However, since passive measures are never going to work on their own, the walls should really be used to funnel the undead into a prepared killing field. The biggest problem would seem to be preventing the pile of re-dead from building up to the point where they provide a ramp for the zombies - however, I would imagine regular applications of napalm B should be enough to clean up.

Of course, these walls are definitely not going to be quick to build, so there are definite advantages to the concertina wire.

I've noticed that, unless they are hunting prey, zombies tend to wander about randomly and follow the path of least resistance. One plan for the zombie apocalypse would be to stay at Chez Szondy (we're on top of a mountain, so the undead won't want to do any climbing if we keep quiet), block off the uphill roads along the slopes on either side of the valley (plastic netting would do so they couldn't wander up) except for feeders with one-way gates for those already in the hills, and then funnel them down into the fields. When enough of them congregate, call in an air strike with a daisy cutter. Failing that, wait for the next flood to wash them out to sea.